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Saffronisation of education goes on in UP and Rajasthan

George Iype in New Delhi

Forced by protests from state education ministers and opposition parties, Human Resource Development Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi may have temporarily shelved his plans to "Indianise, spiritualise and nationalise" school and college curricula in the country.

But the Bhartiya Janata Party ruled state governments of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan are propagating the Hindutva ideology in schools, flouting the norms laid down by the National Council for Education Research and Training, the apex central government body in charge of text books.

NCERT officials said both the UP and Rajasthan governments have effected significant changes in school text books by incorporating the Hindutva agenda of the RSS.

According to a senior official, the NCERRT every year prescribes a "balanced school syllabi' across the country to ensure that text books do not hurt the communal and religious sentiments of the people.

"But we have found that UP and Rajasthan governments have routinely flouted our instructions arguing that education is a state subject," the NCERT official told Rediff On The Net.

He said the NCERT has definite information that the state education boards in Rajasthan and UP have been forced to change the school syllabi to give the RSS perceptive of Indian history and culture in text books. Vidya Bharati, the RSS academic wing that runs thousands of schools in both the states has been permitted to incorporate any changes in the school curricula.

Thus, in many schools across Rajasthan, children learn the Indian Ocean as Hindu Mahasagar, the Arabian Sea as Sindu Sagar and the Bay of Bengal as Ganga Sagar.

The history text books in schools elucidate that Jesus Christ spent several days in the Himalayas and imbibed knowledge and inspiration for Christianity from Hindu sadhus and sanyasis.

The text books further state that Homer's epic Illiad was inspired by the Ramayana, China's flourishing culture has been imbibed from India and the first settlers in Iran were Indians.

Similarly, the UP government has included in the school curriculum long chapters on Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Sant Haridas, Swami Ramkrishna Paramhans and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

The text books in UP schools have questions and answers like these incorporated: 'why is November 2 the blackest day in the history of India?' 'That day kar sevaks were attacked at Ayodhya'.

The Kalyan Singh government in UP has also laid down the day's schedule for students in schools across the state. Accordingly, the morning school session would commence with 'Vandana' and conclude with Vande Mataram while the day would end with the national anthem

While Sanskrit has been made compulsory from class three to eight, all the schools have been instructed to prominently display in the school buildings pictures of Saraswati, the goddess of education. The UP government has also asked its state education board to re-write nearly 25 text books for the next academic years.

"The Rajasthan and UP governments are deleting and adding a number of chapters in text books. It seems the RSS has succeeded in including its ideology among the students in both the states," the NCERT official remarked.

NCERT officials insist that it was high time the central government intervened in the education programmes carried out by different state governments.

In 1992, the Congress government headed by P V Narasimha Rao had set up a committee under the chairmanship of eminent historian Prof Bipan Chandra to evaluate history text books in the country.

The committee recommended that the Centre should constitute special text book committees in each state to ensue that history taught in schools does not deviate from facts.

But the Chandra committee recommendations have been given a quite burial by successive governments at the Centre.

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